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A study conducted last year by NASA scientists has become the latest, and by far the highest profile, piece of evidence in favor of a seemingly impossible space thruster design that’s been evoking worldwide skepticism for some time now. Apparently annoyed by the persistent boosters of several similar but distinct designs, the space agency finally agreed to test an American-made variant called the Cannae Drive. “Alright!” they said. “We’ll test your stupid drive that won’t work.” Except it did work. Seemingly in contravention of the law of conservation of momentum, the team confirmed that the device produces thrust by using electricity, and nothing else. Supporters call them microwave thrusters or quantum vacuum plasma thrusters (QVPT), while most others use the phrase “anomalous thrust device.”

First, the results of NASA’s experiment, since that’s all the team itself wants you to be talking about. Seemingly wanting to avoid unproductive controversy about the nature of existence, they’ve totally ignored the question of how the drive works in favour of simply reporting the data. With controls in place to avoid any confounding forces or variables, the NASA team recorded a reliable thrust between 30 and 50 micro-Newtons, less than a thousandth of the output of some relatively low-powered ion thrusters in use today. Still, the ion thrusters require fuel to operate, and the original QVPT inventor claims the version NASA tested is flawed, leading them to collect far lower thrust readings than his original can provide.

This is an older version of the QVPT than the one NASA tested, though it may still produce more thrust

If confirmed, the practical upshot of this technology would be amazing. Solar panels could provide the electricity needed to keep the thruster working, meaning that propulsion would be low-thrust and long-term with virtually no associated cost. That would not only drastically reduce the cost of keeping satellites running and in orbit, but it could make interstellar travel much easier; Harold White, of warp drive fame, predicted that a beefed up version of the QVPT could reach Proxima Centauri in about 30 years (assuming the concept actually works at all).

Warp drives aren’t such a harebrained concept any more, so why should quantum drives be?

While NASA might not want to talk about it, though, for us it’s worth discussing just how this drive’s creators hypothesize the thruster works. By now, most people are aware that the laws of classical physics tend to break down at the quantum scale, and exploiting that fact can give you interesting little physical impossibilities like infinitely accelerating negative-mass photons. However, the effects of these quantum-scale impossibilities have always stayed at the quantum scale; sure one atom could theoretically phase-shift through another, but we still can’t run through walls.

The central insight here (assuming this isn’t all a big mistake) is that something called quantum vacuum fluctuations will occasionally spontaneously create particles all throughout the vacuum of space, and that these short-lived particles can be put to useful work. Thus, this thruster actually does use fuel — it just finds and uses that fuel as it goes. The thruster essentially turns these virtual particles into a plasma and expels them out the back of the ship, much like a conventional fuel source. The quantum fuel, though, spontaneously appears inside the thruster’s reaction area without even the need for collection or injection hardware. All things considered, that’s more than a little exciting.

The original design, called the emDrive by creator Roger Shawyer, should get significantly more attention in the coming months, which ought to feel good given the long struggles he’s had with professional apathy and skepticism. As mentioned, the version tested by NASA is distinct from the emDrive, but still (they think) makes use of the quantum vacuum particles as the propellant. There are very preliminary plans to test a version of the drive in space, but such orbital work is expensive; now it might finally have the juice to warrant such a plan.

now we just need some space dust, virtual particle intakes to boost up the thrust.

but isn’t the main problem with those thrusters that it requires high amounts of energy for there relative low thrust?

and you still need energy which has mass and comes from somewhere, the sun or a nuclear reactor.

Pooua

If this device works as advertised, it means a rocket would not need to carry propellant, even if it must carry an energy source. Even a nuclear rocket carries propellant, which is a large fraction of a spaceship’s total mass. A ship that doesn’t need to lose mass to move could be a great advance.

Paul M

“A ship that doesn’t need to lose mass to move could be a great advance.” Sure could. We could build starships on that principle.

Book N Tech

You would need to have orbital space dry docks because you’d melt the titanium plating when you tried leaving the atmosphere.

Pooua

That doesn’t make sense.

Book N Tech

Ships like the space shuttle that go to space today have heat shields for atmospheric flight. You don’t want to melt part of your ship especially a smaller ship made exclusively for the vacuum of space to lose expensive titanium plating.

Pooua

We weren’t talking about how to build the entire ship, or where we would build it or out of what material we would build it. We were talking about the potential of the engines to propel the ship.

Book N Tech

Ahh okay. Makes sense

Jonathan McClain

You’re assuming that hypersonic reentry would be necessary; the heat shielding is only required because the space shuttle was maintaining orbital velocity shortly before the retro thrusters are engaged. Which depending on your altitude can be anywhere between 17000-18000 mph. If you could reduce reentry speeds to supersonic speeds like Mach 1.5-2 heat shielding wouldn’t be necessary. This would require significant advancements in propulsion however, possibly provided by the descendants of the EM Drive.

Nick Girard

It wouldn’t be extremely difficult to use carbon nanotube design vessels that are much less weight, and can have much more advanced resonation.

We would likely build arks with this. AI driven gene synthesizers and a small carbon nanotube biodome. Seld assembling nanotech could spread humanity to different worlds, but they would be a new people, but our children. I wonder if aerobraking SHOULD be an option.

Brandonm22

I think there are ways to get around that materially but orbital space dry docks make sense anyway for planet to planet or star to star transit simply from the fact that you don’t have to include the weight of the thrusters to leave the atmosphere in the original ship. Something akin to the shuttle would be sufficient for shuttling men and material from the earth’s surface to the dry docks and back.

massau

i guess we would use space elevators on the moon for the dry docks. this would require less energy and we could use the moon materials to build more rockets. but our technology is far from ready.

4Real

Space docks 3D-Printing silver or Gravity-Moulding silver-based ships for minimal gravitational pull from large objects as we zoom past them and the immense gravitational pull of other planetary objects we’re checking out on the way to our pre-colonized super-earth Sheraton’s.

Robert Miles

What would a “dry” dock, as opposed to a non-dry dock, be in space? Air filled?

Shmulye

yes, just as a dry dock for boats is out of water for easy maintenance, a dry dock in space would be filled with air

Chester Davis

I doubt the design could produce enough thrust to get a rocket off the ground. This is really going to be a space-only drive system.

Pooua

Nobody should expect an engine that produces a millinewton or less of thrust would leave any planet on its own.

Seanson

Not in it’s current state but give it 50 years of development and who knows where we will be.

Sure, just like cars use the technology as used back in the late 1800’s. It’s much more advanced than it was back then, but the same basic principles still apply.

massau

yes and no the main engine is the same but because of electronics and more precise manufacturing technologies we have increased the efficiency. just like diesel engines and injection engines. we also added some stuff like turbo to further increase the efficiency or atlease power/weight.
the car body has been significantly been upgraded but because of the speed limit and cheap fuel there hasn’t been much upgrading at the core of the engine.

the biggest changes in the car are the ABS and ESP.

the space industry funding dropped significant since the end of the cold war. (satellites are evolving fast rockets didn’t)

Gouchybear

We haven’t even scratched the surface as far as implementing some of the technology developed for the internal combustion engine. For example, back in the 1970’s (the 70’s mind you) a ceramic engine was developed based on the Chevy 283 c.i.d. that made well over 500 horse power without the use of a turbo or supercharger all because the operating temperature was raised to over 700 degrees. The engine was nearly 100% efficient because of the near total combustion of the fuel (high octane pump gas). The article to which I refer appeared in Hot Rod magazine. To this day we continue to be limited to the 190 – 200 degree operating range for an automobile engine and the poor efficiency associated with such temperature’s. Why? All because the oil companies have a strangle hold on the auto industry and would not allow further development of the ceramic engine. So instead of a nearly 100% efficient engine with zero emissions and higher power output, we have to put catalytic converters on our cars to burn off the hydrocarbons expelled out the tailpipe. We’ve had this technology for more than 40 years. Isn’t it about time we did something with it??

massau

near 100% efficiency? really.
the maximum efficiency of a perfect Carnot engine would be 0,7 (30C in 700 max). i think the engine just burned the fuel better than compaired to the other engines at that time.

i’m not a die hard guy in cars and there engines but i think this article is part 2 of the story and it mentioned that ceramic engines where just to expensive and hard to make while injection solved the problem with the fuel burning.

Totally wrong. Crackpot articles like this sure are popular among those who don’t actually do any science, aren’t they? I, on the other hand, have worked on civilian projects related to diesel efficiency, emissions and durability at Sandia.

1. Ceramic engines aren’t 100% efficient
2. Ceramic materials have major toughness issues which prevent it from being used in the real world, outside of short period testing in the lab (Strong, but brittle – like glass.)
3. Ceramic technology is already used in modern engines where feasible (coatings, mainly) and this is generally nearly as good as making the entire piece out of ceramic, as far as reflecting heat and mitigating wear.

Oil is incredibly useful for a wide variety of fuel, chemical, and lubrication purposes, and will flow until the last drop is gone. Oil companies have no fear that they will be out of business anytime soon, and neither do the decision makers who are already sitting on enormous personal fortunes of their own.

Alluvial Fansome

The calculated sea level rise from burning all of the known fossil fuel reserves is 260 ft.

Yeah. I wish the funding never subsided. Imagine where we could be. :(

dc

our current rockets are smaller and incapable of reaching the moon. In other words, we are not as good as we were 40 years ago.

massau

yes and no our rockets are smaller because at the moment we only need it to get into orbit but if we needed to lift more weight or get to the moon than we could just scale up the designs or add more nozzle or add an other stage.

I think they became more efficient and lighter but only by a small margin we need another type of propulsion to restart the development of better engines.

dc

you need to read this site more regularly, or some tech journals anyway. The answer isn’t rockets, it’s a space elevator. Build that to get into orbit and then use a different engine to move around in space. The problem becomes when you arrive at the other planet. At first you would need to rely on similar rockets to what we are using now here on earth. You could eventually, of course build a space elevator on Mars once we have the science worked out.

But really we should be working on the space elevator here and now with at least 1/2 of our research. Forget the other projects until we have that worked out because it is the real game changer.

massau

a space elevator on earth has a lot of back draws but a space elevator on Mars , the moon would be more feasible.

but my opinion about space colonisations would be first a moon base for testing. later when we have the technology we would build Stanford toruses to live in space these could be build from moon materials.

thermoforming is just a waste of time and energy. especially compared to the amount of work needed to the amount of liveable space.

dc

I think that you mean terraforming. I feel that it should be a long term goal on Mars, if that’s what you meant. At least to some extent. Changing the atmosphere would be the goal.

As for the Moon, a permanent Moon base certainly should be built. It may be able to provide the key resources needed to build ships that go to Mars, although if we humans had a space elevator, we might not need it.

Why do you believe that an elevator on earth would not work?

massau

terraforming requires an enormous amount of gass, heat to get an atmosphere onto mars it would also be really hard to create the right climate etc and it takes a lot of time.

but if you used all this energy and gas and resources to create rotating space stations you would have a much larger living space compared to the surface off Mars. these space stations like O’Neill cylinder or the Stanford torus design would be a better idea than teraforming mars. but we do not have the technology to do any of them.

sure it would be easier, but we don’t live on the Moon. We need something that is accessible to us humans.

Def Con

we r 75 percent water.

Alluvial Fansome

If space elevator is the answer, what is the question?

Alluvial Fansome

Yep. That’s what I’ve been telling you kids. Now, get off my lawn.

Alluvial Fansome

Well, we can’t go to the moon, but we have electric cars.

Drumsetman

Yeah but economy over technology, economy always wins lol.

John Russell

I’d give it 300 years if the sanctimonious oil giants and corrupt politicians have anything to say about it.

Jordan Drum

You’re forgetting about the “scientific community” as well. Just like the “medical community,” each separate scientific profession acts like its own monopoly on medicine (or in this case knowledge that only a few people can wrap their minds around). The engineers, physicists, etc. who claim this to be “impossible” will do everything they can to delay any piece of technology or theory that is in contrast to their own theories because it is a threat to their financial well-being and employment. It hasn’t just been the religious, political or economic hierarchy that has stifled scientific or technological progress throughout history; it has also been the scientific hierarchy.

massau

scientists are not politicians. a lot of science communities work together to get a lot further. i suspect they would call this engine highly unlikely using the physics of today. so they wouldn’t use there funding for it.

Robert Miles

Science can basically be boiled down to, “prove it.”
On the other hand, if you’re looking for support from other scientists, realize they are a busy in their own right and don’t see the need to drop everything every time yet another quack dashes up with yet another stupid plan for a 100 mpg carburator or water-burning engine or whatever – and demands instant support from everyone. You don’t need support – you need to PROVE IT, that simple, nobody stopping you.

Russian Mafia Hitman

If EVER…Unless it kills people in a war or it praises jesus, the GOP idiots congress wants nothing to do with anything scientific…

American

The republicans are certainly wimps, but the democrats are absolute pure evil.

w w

Only ones fighting science are the left wing loonies.

Kimberly

The oil industry has never had a hand in rocket propellant, this topic is irrelevant to them.

Chester Davis

That’s what I was thinking as well. But even if they can pump 10000 times more energy into it at 10 times the efficiency that still isn’t enough thrust to get a small cargo ship into orbit.

Not Savant

That’s why you get a bigger rocket to take it into orbit. The whole point of it is to have a self sustainable vessel. It doesn’t matter if you use some initial fuel getting it there.

Jay Means

its a step in the right direction and would work well for keeping orbits for a sat. but for a human habitable vessel such as the ISS you are going to need to replenish the O2, H20, CO2 scrubbers, food and if all that needs to be replaced the fuel for a ion thruster isn’t much to tack on

4Real

90% AeroGel filled titanium body might.

4Real

Like a balloon could take it to low orbit.

massau

yes and no it gets you high but you still need rockets to get to the orbital velocity.

dc

its not meant to….

geez.. people use your heads.

its meant to move things once those things are in outer space.

riley

think of it this way, Traditionally it takes 3.8 million pounds of our most powerful hydrogen fuel, just to get a 1.3 million pound space shuttle to reach orbit. The emDrive couldn’t get its own weight into space, but that isn’t even an issue, both could easily be used together if and when they advance the emDrive to its full potential.

American

Many years ago, they said a battery driven electric motor would never have the ability to turn an internal combustion engine over in order to start it. Since this thing is also in its infant stage, perhaps it will one day make today’s experiments look like a middle school science project.

dc

when did they say that? I’m curious because it sounds like absolute rubbish.

Alluvial Fansome

Doubtful, because electric cars were on the road when IC cars still used hand cranks to start. QED.

dc

no… it can never reach space. This type of engine isn’t meant to launch something. It’s meant to move something once it is in space. As for the space shuttle. It’s dead and buried. But there are better rockets in development. Hell we had better rockets 40 years ago.

riley

– That is exactly what I said in reference to Pooua’s comment, when I said “The EmDrive couldn’t even get it’s own weight into space”….

What are you even saying? A Space Shuttle, isn’t a rocket, and no it not “dead and buried” Space Shuttle is a general term for for different Space Transportation Systems, its always being developed and changed, so they will always be around… Pretty much nothing you said is true, the most powerful rocket’s are obviously being developed today, the SLS booster is way beyond any rocket in the Saturn V family.

dc

a space shuttle isn’t a rocket? your post is funny in a funny kind of way.

What people refer to as the Space Shuttle was the one we used the past 30 years. You may not have heard of it, but if you know how to use Google, you can type in “Space Shuttle” and will find some hits for it. It is dead and buried. Might someday someone make something with wings that returns to the planet and can also leave high earth orbit (which the shuttle couldn’t)? Maybe.

riley

There is Space Shuttle,and there is Solid Rocket Booster. completely different.

dc

you are right. I am wrong. the space shuttle maneuvered using the collective power of idiots on the internet.

but then how did it move around in the 80s?

riley

Although I dont think you have posted enough garbage online, Maybe it time to take a break and go play with your GIjoe action figure’s and get off the computer for a minute. or maybe a day job.

Alluvial Fansome

Ancient humans used these crude vehicles to travel into near earth orbit.

Truth_in_Defense

Russia is about to resume their own shuttle program. So it isn’t the space shuttle that is dead and buried…its NASA.

massau

it only works in vacuum so first you will use the air as a propellant and than the virtual particles but you would still need mass and lose bit but in the form of energy (E=mc^2).

so 1kg of uranium gets split after which we only have 0.99.. kg left of fission products. these will be dumped for higher efficiency.
this is only a small fraction but the main problem is the thrust at a required energy level.

Anony M.

The thing people in this discussion neglected to look at for orbital travel is the fact that outside of the earth’s magnetosphere (~56,000miles toward the sun and ~3.9million miles away from the sun) there is NO PROTECTION from the cosmic radiation being generated by the sun and all kinds of other sources. Some of these fast neutrons and other high-energy particles have effective energies in the BILLIONS of electronvolts, which would strike an astronaut (and a computer bank!) dead in minutes.

Before we can even think of applications of QVPT to interplanetary travel, we’d need to figure out how to shield a large enough volume against this kind of ionizing radiation by generating our own microcosm with a mini-magnetosphere powerful enough (probably something like 15-20 Tesla magnetic field?) to deflect charge particles so that the team gets to their destination alive and with a functional navigational computer system, life support, etc.

This is a HUGE challenge, and NASA would no doubt make it worth your time if you can come up with a viable solution. I happen to know someone is in the process of patenting an idea at the moment prior to proposing it to NASA, and from what I’ve seen, it has merit, though the system would probably be pretty fragile.

The real difficulty is not in generating the magnetic field or polarized hull plating needed, it’s in doing it without adding 10 tons of weight to the ship. NASA has specified that any solution must not add more than 1 ton of weight to the ship design, and rightly so.

Cyperion

I agree. Even with the early fusion reactors we are trying to build, they require a huge thickness of protective material to avoid irradiating everything around it, the reverse being needed as stars are really big fusion reactors. We would also need more than an artificial magnetosphere, but also an artificial ‘atmosphere’ that blocks most of the gamma and ultraviolet radiation. It would also need to be able to block huge amounts of it too since a hyper nova in our galaxy can kill all life on earth once the gamma reaches us, and there is likely a huge amount of it ambient in outer space. Musk’s new idea with colonizing mars uses chemical rockets, and the ship doesn’t have adequate radiation protection, both are bad for the humans on board, especially the 100,000,000 he plans to send.

mitcheroo

If this really does work, then we must conclude that somehow momentum *is* being conserved somewhere… just not along the conventional and usual “conduits”. Shawyer has his own relativistically-allowed explanation for how momentum is conserved here, but he couldn’t get anyone to listen to him.

massau

my guess based the classical physics the momentum is constant you push yourself forward on particles thus the engine pushes the virtual particles away. after which the virtual particle destroy each other the kinetic energy will somehow be converted to an other type of energy.

momentum doesn’t need to be conserved but energy has to stay constant so a part of the momentum becomes heat in the classical system.

Lumpose

Start working from home! Great job for students, stay-at-home moms or anyone needing an extra income… You only need a computer and a reliable internet connection… Make $90 hourly and up to $12000 a month by following link at the bottom and signing up… You can have your first check by the end of this week,,,,,,,,,

Yeah, except you totally forgot to mention this one little, yet very important detail:

“Thrust was observed on both test articles, even though one of the test articles was designed with the expectation that it would not produce thrust. Specifically, one test article contained internal physical modifications that were designed to produce thrust, while the other did not (with the latter being referred to as the “null” test article).”

If I wanted to test if my new experimental cold fusion device works and used my fridge as a control and got positive results from both my experimental device and my fridge, I wouldn’t exactly say it works.

mrseanpaul81

Maybe there is nothing there… Testing it in space should put all that to rest! But I think we can all agree that further research is needed.

Luc

You don’t need to test it “in space” off of the Earth. The earth’s surface is almost as much concentrated nothingness as beyond the atmosphere in terms of the quantum scale

Storris

Given that this time last year (month, week, night) the entire experiment would have been considered pseudo-science at best, and that NASA does not understand the physics involved, designing a functioning “null” test article might take a little more time.

Naum Rusomarov

Given that the original designer is more interested in filing patents than getting his work published in peer reviewed journals I’m 99 percent sure that he’s full of shit.

Every self respecting scientist that considers his work significant and correct will try to publish the results in a peer-reviewed journal. This guy hasn’t published a single such paper. So, if he can’t convince anyone of his peers that what he’s doing makes sense he sure won’t convince me even if he’s right.

Zeratul Zum

Nonsenses. I would do the same. There is no value in trying to convince retarded “peers” that are more interested in bulling you than making science.

Jacob Grove

While your right that he stands to make more money, there is none to be made if he can’t convince anyone to use it. History has shown peers to bully great minds though so your point remains valid.

oggologgo

@Zeratul Zum, Nonsense. You clearly don’t understand the first thing about it. Getting peer reviewed is absolute number one, and the peers are certainly not retarded. Nothing legit has ever come from anyone doing what this guy is doing. Nothing but pseudoscience and conspiracy theory, and always excusing the lack of real proof, by saying the real scientists are retarded or corrupt.

Jon Lisle-Summers

Isaac Newton wasn’t peer-reviewed. Just saying… Also, all human activity is imperfect if not actually corrupt. The moment anything of this nature looks possible, it gets messy. Big business isn’t exactly famous for having any ethics.

oggologgo

Irrelevant.

Sineater37

Sounds a lot like the Tesla/Edison electrical schemes and the bullying Edison did and his “peers” helped him with. Ridicule is a fantastic way to destroy innovation!!

Naum Rusomarov

Yeah, I know. It’s much easier to convince the illiterate public into believing that absurd perpetuum mobile apparatus can be built than trying to convince your retarded peers who know that the laws of physics do not allow for such things.

Sineater37

The laws of physics AS WE KNOW THEM. What makes you think, firstly, that we truly know the laws and secondly that we have it anywhere near correct?!? There’s a lot of repetitive teaching outthere and not enough independent thinking and experimenting…most likely for a reason. A “peer” review would be a fantastic way to stop this kind of innovation and motivation from going too far. Oh wait, we have that already!!!! Man, the cartels think of everything.

Naum Rusomarov

You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. This is not 15th century. The fundamental laws of physics AS WE KNOW THEM have been tested and retested in hundreds if not thousands of experiments and cannot be changed at this point. NOT EVEN SLIGHTLY.

Anything that contradicts them, like this charlatan claiming that his ZOMG PATENTED!!111 no-fuel quantum space engine, simply cannot exist and is even beyond science fiction.

A peer-review is a fantastic way to weed out the idiots and charlatans from the rest. While it’s not perfect and sometimes can fail in the end good and meaningful ideas always prevail. The proof for that is our scientific advancement in the last several centuries. :)

Guest

Really? The earth is flat, because I said so. The sheer fact this has 40 upvotes astounds me. Keep your pseudo-science to yourself then, we’ll all just laugh and point fingers at your arrogance and inability to convince the “bullies” from proving you wrong. Any respectable scientist/mathematician/etc. gets a sense of excitement on being proven wrong. “You wake me up early in the morning to tell me that I’m right? Please wait until I’m wrong.” –John von Neumann

Guest

Really? The earth is flat, because I said so. The sheer fact this has 40 upvotes astounds me. Keep your pseudo-science to yourself then, we’ll all just laugh and point fingers at your arrogance and inability to convince the “bullies” from proving you wrong. Any respectable scientist/mathematician/etc. gets a sense of excitement on being proven wrong. “You wake me up early in the morning to tell me that I’m right? Please wait until I’m wrong.” -John von Neumann

Nero12

It could be that he has tried to publish in a peer reviewed journal but was denied because it was seen as pseudo science.
But yeah, a lack of scholarly writing on this topic does not speak well for its credibility.

Radu Miron

As far as my knowledge goes, the science behind it is well established. You use energy to excite vacuum fluctuations of the force fields into more energetic states that manifest themselves as particles. It is the phenomenon that enables us to make lasers

Joel Detrow

The problem is peer-reviewed journals are still beholden to editors. Some parts of the scientific community suffer greatly from publication bias, where studies which produce negative results overwhelmingly don’t get published (Exhibit A: Big Pharma). In the case of this design, he couldn’t get published because all the journals’ editors (and, as we saw, even NASA) thought he was full of shit and refused to publish his studies, however valid and rigorous they may have been.

Naum Rusomarov

Let’s not mix big pharma and fundamental physics and engineering. The latter does not have the huge financial incentives and government and corporate pressure to produce valuable research no matter what.

About the editors. Do you know that the editors are selected from the same scientists working in the field? An editor of a scientific journal is nothing more than a scientist that has proven himself to be a knowledgeable expert in his specialisation, who holds a broad understanding of neighbouring fields. They are elected for a period of four years. After that period is over associate editors are rarely re-elected a second time.

CJ

Are scientists working for grants essentially? So there is a financial incentive to produce something to justify the funding.

aReefer

Well, one could also make the argument that for this same reason, we would today not have electricity – based on the fact that as I understand it, nobody to this day knows for sure if the universe is full of individual electrons, or just one really fast one that is everywhere at once.

If this could not be fully explained and peer reviewed by today before implementing the wide scale generation of electricity, then we would still be in the dark ages right now.

All we really need to know is that it works – one way or the other.

Ulrich Werner

The one-electron universe was a crazy idea by Wheeler. We can essentially forget about it, because it contradicts observed reality. Already Feynman pointed out that there are less positrons than electrons in the universe, although the one-electron universe would predict exactly the same amount.

mrseanpaul81

A better example would be superconductors. It took around 50 years to get a semi-Theory (BCS). And now, more than 100 years after its discovery, we still cant fully explain it (High Temperature superconductor)

widoe

You have to understand that without patents you’re work is gone in a matter of moments once you take it public. Don’t ever publish without protecting your invention first.

American

With the Chinese also working on it, patents or not, if it’s real it will be developed.

Joao Ribeiro

Agreed, and something about those numbers does not add up.
How do you get anywhere in the atmosphere with such low G acceleration force???

Asdf Ghjk

If it worked, it wouldn’t be used to gain escape velocity but, like ion drives, to propel the spacecraft once already in orbit.

Jacob Grove

Keep in mind though that there are few things that can be used to their full potential as soon as they are conceived. Most things have to start as a proof of concept and then be built on to create something useful. There is still potential.

mrseanpaul81

This version that NASA tested was build by Guido Fetta. According to the leading Guru in the field, Rodger Shawyer, he knows exactly why Fetta’s version is so low compare to his finding. He is already (or may have done so already) building a version that use superconductors.

This is not an atmospheric drive, but a drive for in space propulsion.

Nathan Douglas Lindeman

If your into this sort of thing, try playing “kerbal space program”. A computer game that tricks you into learning about space travel, physics, and orbital dynamics. Besides that, it’s super fun. But while this engine provides very low specific impulse, the amount of deltaV is basicly infinite, provided it’s supplied power.

fred

Actually, this engine supposedly provides “infinite” specific impulse — that is, low *thrust* but with zero propellant. Clearly you need to play more KSP!

Nathan Douglas Lindeman

You sir, are correct, I misspoke, and should have indeed said, low thrust, and theoretically infinite deltaV and thus Specific impulse.

Matthew Kent

The Chinese are way ahead of us on this. They tested this in similar environment as NASA and confirmed it worked (although they had a significantly higher thrust output). Word is they are already looking move this into next stage trials. To be honest, I can’t blame NASA, when I first heard about this, I completely dismissed it as well. I do believe the guy has been trying to get others to verify his device for a while, but everyone just laughed at him. That is what happens when you have something that seems to work, but have no idea why.

Asdf Ghjk

Do you mean that recent Chinese test that was supposed to generate 720 mN of thrust out of the same kind of thruster? Because I couldn’t find any credible sources for that, apart from Chinese claims.

don

Chinese aren’t credible? haha.

Asdf Ghjk

It is pretty safe to say they are at least less credible when it comes to things like this.
But what I was saying is that there are no sources, apart from CLAIMS. The supposed Chinese test took place last autumn. And if it was a real deal, it was a HUGE DEAL. And if it was a huge deal, there oughta be real sources. Like peer reviewed publications, not just sensationalist Wired reporting.

This drive has been around for a while and the concept didn’t work 4 years go. Me thinks hopping from place to place finally yielded some results.

Also a while back somehow the Chinese got ahold of the design and it “worked” for them last year. Search Q drive and M drive and Chinese sat propulsion. There is a whole lot more to this story and history than the article leads on to.

This tech is the equivalent to putting a fan in a box, closing the lid, and watching the box slide across the floor.

eonvee375

in 30years? that mean the probe will reach 1/7th speed of light? nice ^^

ScoobiJohn

might be faster might be including a deceleration into alpha centauri system

Techutante

Boost all the way till the 50% mark, then brake all the way to your destination?

Joel Detrow

“You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve had people ask, ‘Why’s the ship turning around? We’re only halfway there!’ “

eonvee375

LOL ^^ what i did is strap some solid boosters in front, that made Jebediah happy ^^

Steve McAbee

How do you avoid hitting space rocks at that speed?

scashman

No space rocks in deep space

Steve McAbee

Really?

scashman

Well not very many of them.. there are no asteroids at least. I am not an expert on this though, I could be totally wrong

ScoobiJohn

problem is that at that speed a spec of dust is like a nuke going off – but yeah largely your hoping not to encounter much in interstellar space and they usually encorporate an ablative shield to protect against space gases etc – imagine the robots go first routine would apply and maybe more than one just incase

Techutante

There’s a lot of issues yet to work out, but an effective radiation shield would also protect from space dust by deflecting it around the field, much like the earth’s magnetic field repels solar storms.

don

There are, just very rare. When I took astrophysics in college (long time ago) I think we were estimating one microscopic magnetic particle in deep space on the order of magnitude of 1 in every X light years. If I remember correctly…

Jeremy Curd

Find a rather large and thick asteroid, build the ship inside of it, it takes the brunt of the blows and acts as a shield for those inside, problem solved.

Travis

deflector shield, duh!

ronch

Can they make an impossible no-fuel engine for my car too?

eonvee375

depends on the distance you want to travel ^^ to a supermarket or a supernova?

ronch

The supermarket would be more convenient by a few thousand light years so…

Naum Rusomarov

Apparently, they can.

A quote from http://www.dvice.com/2013-2-8/china-claims-successful-test-microwave-relativity-engine
“As skeptical as we are, let’s just pretend for a second that the EmDrive is proven to work. What’s the future like? Well, Shawyer says that with a superconducting cavity, the EmDrive could eventually be boosted to produce three tons of lift from just one kilowatt of input power. You could put them on anything you wanted to counteract gravity, while using conventional engines to provide high-impulse thrust. This would mean flying cars, it would mean highly efficient aircraft, it would mean cheap cargo to space. Gravity would cease to be a factor, requiring only renewable energy to counteract. It would be a fundamental and mind-blowing paradigm shift in all aspects of transportation.”

Three tons of lift from one kw of input power! :D

ChrisPollard77

So they could use this to finally build HOVERBOARDS that’ll hoist 100kg (220lbs) on about 34 watts? Sign me up!!

Knowles2

presuming you can build a cooling unit small enough to create superconductors work or discover room temperature superconductors.

Matt Campbell

Really Mike?

Setting m = 100 kg, g = 9.8 m/s2 and h = 3 m gives 2940 J (Watts)

Kiran Mathew Koshy

Could you add some details on how these radio waves produce momentum ?

Sketchie

AFAIK, all waves (light, radio, gamma, x-ray, micro, whatever) exert force. As it produces the waves, it will send the waves in one direction, thus pushing the object it’s emitting from (Newton’s 3rd).

Pooua

You are using the wrong physical model. Waves don’t carry momentum. Particles carry momentum. Einstein won a Nobel Prize for explaining that photons carry energy in light.

Hug Doug

the physics are poorly understood. the paper did not get into those details at all. it simply showed the results of the experiments

mrseanpaul81

Honestly we dont know (assuming this is confirmed). I am way more interested in confirming experimental results than underlying physics for now (we still dont understand high temp superconductors and its been 20+ years, that doesnt seem to stop us from using them!)

Kiran Mathew Koshy

Sure, but I wouldn’t step foot on a spaceship working on a technology no one knows about

Eemeli Saarelainen

Really? The open nature towards unknown is what brings science further. Think about Marie Curie who exposed herself to radiation in an attempt to get more info about it. (Got her killed but a huge win for science)

Knowles2

We still don’t fully understand how glass is form, that hasn’t stop us from using glass.

Same with all sorts of drugs, we know they work, even if we don’t understand how they work.

JoseJBabb

If I wanted to test if my new experimental cold fusion device works and used my fridge as a control and got positive results from both my experimental device and my fridge, I wouldn’t exactly say it works. http://qr.net/Fh7J

Max

The singularity just got another variable added to the mix. Incorporating this tech into the evolution of man. Wonderful.

Ivor O’Connor

So both the space ship and the fridge passed the test. I suppose this is not unexpected given we are descendants of the ‘B Ark’ from Golgafrincham. The ark full of hair dressers and phone sanitizers…

Oaf

What

Ivor O’Connor

Reference from the Hitch Hikers Guide To The Galaxy.

Naum Rusomarov

We are the descendents of the humanoid Cylons and the surviving humans from the twelve colonies.

You know, I see some parallels with my childhood here. In 4th grade, I thought that I had invented something that would change the world. I had “blueprints”, CAD drawings, models, etc… The math even all worked out in my head. Hell, I even had an an acronym for it: the URE (unlimited range engine).

Eventually, I explained my design to my teacher in science class and the whole design, everything I had worked for over the last three months, came crashing down with the utterance of three words: perpetual motion machine.

It turned out that my understanding of the universe was just missing just a few key details and suddenly, it all made sense why my design hadn’t already been mass produced.

I don’t see this being much different. As our understanding of the quantum world as a species increases, I feel that we’ll see why or how this works and i’ll seem a whole lot less “magical”. It isn’t “fueless” or a hole in the first law of thermodynamics, just a bit of a loophole.

Joel Hruska

I think that there’s a difference here. If this engine actually works — as in, exploits quantum effects to generate thrust — it hasn’t actually broken the laws of physics. It’s found a way to take advantage of quantum effects to produce power.

Perpetual motion machines would still remain impossible, IIRC.

Dozerman

I never meant that it is breaking the laws of physics, just that this maybe isn’t as magical as some people are putting on. You’re never going to be able to completely bitchslap reality with clever thinking, only find ways to work with the laws to get something done.

elo

Regardless of how it works, if it uses only electricity to produce constant thrust, that is incredibly huge for space exploration. Ion Thrust engines are great because they will far outstrip the speed of any rocket if you give it enough time. Solar sails are also another likely strong technology of the future for exploration probes/satellites.

thermoplasticity

“The quantum fuel, though, spontaneously appears inside the thruster’s reaction area without even the need for collection or injection hardware. ” Sooooo is this pointing to something like Zero Point Energy? Because that’s what it sounds like.

Hug Doug

no. this is pointing at the existence of virtual quantum particles. nothing to do with zero-point energy.

Harry_Wild

Looks like NASA is not to keen on advancement of this technology. I wish NASA would of try out the Atomic engine they developed back in the early 80s. It was powerful and last 15-20 years without refueling. That was the ticket then and now! Fear of it exploding or falling back into Earth canceled the project! Yes, by environmentalist too!

Damon Hill

Well, no. If you’re referring to NERVA, a nuclear thermal rocket engine, you’re misunderstanding a lot of things. It used hydrogen as the reaction mass and has a higher specific impulse than any chemical rocket engine, but that just makes it somewhat more efficient. Clearly, it worked, and generated thousands of pounds of thrust, so long as it had reaction mass (in the form of liquid hydrogen) to both cool the very hot reactor core and be expanded out the exhaust nozzle. Several such engines were constructed and clearly demonstrated to work back in the late 60s and early 70s; the Russians have done similar work on a smaller scale, but nothing flight-weight was ever built.

Ultimately there was no mission funded that needed such an engine, and so it was never flown. That’s all.

As to whether this quantum thruster actually produces even an infinitesimal amount of thrust still needs to be proven and reproven by independent research.

I hope there’s really something to it. I can fully understand NASA’s skepticism. Maybe it’ll turn out to work in a useful manner; it took decades for ion engines to be developed, demonstrated, and put into regular use on some communication satellites.

Patience. Persistence.

Joel Hruska

Right. NERVA could be reactivated and scaled up; the original engine was proof-of-concept for a manned Mars mission that never happened, IIRC.

Naum Rusomarov

It is relatively easy to create a truster design that is supposed to have nonzero trust but instead has a very small trust. One such case was with the Pioneers probes, which were accelerating slightly faster than expected. The value was miniscule but definite and measurable. Only in 2012 several papers showed that the anomaly could be explained by carefully accounting for the thermal radiation produced by the radioisotope thermal generators present in the probes.

kroozin

If quantum fuel spontaneously appears and is ejected does that make it have mass? If so, then all quanta that spontaneously appear and hit the hull of the ship must oppose its inertia right? Or does transforming quantum particles to plasma “give” them mass, whereas before they were massless?
Sorry, not a physics major here . . .

Robert Rockey

Yes it would be all around and do have a minute amount of mass but its so small its easier to just think of it as non existent. But if its shooting the particles to that of a fraction the speed of light it will add up over time. Its like a tinny propeller on a bowling ball. Sitting here on earth it wont do anything, but if there was no gravity it would be able to move, just VERY slowly.

xcore

as i read it its basically the “Dirac sea” at the sub atomic scale, in fact its from the the smallest scale to date ‘the plank scale” theory [as we cant measure that low to date]

“History

Paul Dirac was the first to propose that empty space (a vacuum) can be visualized as consisting of a sea of electrons with negative energy, known as the Dirac sea. The Dirac sea has a direct analog to the electronic band structure in crystalline solids as described in solid state physics. Here, particles correspond to conduction electrons, and antiparticles to holes. A variety of interesting phenomena can be attributed to this structure. The development of quantum field theory (QFT) in the 1930s made it possible to reformulate the Dirac equation in a way that treats the positron as a “real” particle rather than the absence of a particle, and makes the vacuum the state in which no particles exist instead of an infinite sea of particles.”

”
In quantum physics, a quantum vacuum fluctuation (or quantum fluctuation or vacuum fluctuation) is the temporary change in the amount of energy in a point in space,[1] as explained in Werner Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.

…that conservation of energy can appear to be violated, but only for small values of t (time). This allows the creation of particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles. The effects of these particles are measurable, for example, in the effective charge of the electron, different from its “naked” charge.”

it would seem that energizing these particle-antiparticle pairs of virtual particles might delay their natural annihilation processes and being far more energetic become large enough to become usable as a plasma thrust fuel.

perhaps its also a multiple plank scale atomic reaction , a plank scale atomic bomb thats powerful enough to be seen at the human macro scale !

Boris

“Thus, this thruster actually does use fuel — it just finds and uses that fuel as it goes.”
I think you mean “Propellant”, rather than “fuel”. The drive is electric, its fuel is electricity.

lm_a_dope

When can I get one modified to power my house and car?

Pooua

I’m wondering if uneven heating could be responsible for the thrust, either by radiation pressure itself escaping or by particles on the exterior of the device taking away energy?

Donald Gracia

Well…I bet if you use an old radio vacuum tube it could accelerate some quantum vacuum electron manifestations…But this approach has a problem: the propulsion as one increases the energy isn’t proportional, so if you give twice as much gas you don’t get twice as much acceleration. Why? Because quantum vacuum electrons come into existence at a statistical rate and so while you have twice as much energy you don’t have the mass density to produce twice as much thrust. think of it this way: You can throw a basket ball when someone passes you a basket ball, but while you wait for a basket ball despite the fact that now you want to throw a basket ball twice as hard as before you still have to wait for that basket ball, given that power is a function of time…well you get my point.

As a science fair project this is a great idea and perhaps a better illustration of quantum vacuum energy or mass compared to the Kasimir experiments. Considering that the transformation of light into energy is between ten to fifteen percent effective, I think good ole rocket fuel is a better bang for the buck…

Pooua

Nothing gets transformed into energy. Energy never exists by itself. Energy always is a characteristic of objects. Light conveys energy. The energy in light can be transformed into other types of energy.

Paul M

If this thing works the implications are incredible. But if it doesn’t some other idea will take its place. I’m convinced that we humans vastly overrate our understanding of the cosmos yet vastly underrate our ability to expand that understanding. In other words, we’re more ignorant than we think but smarter than we imagine. I think we’ll figure out how to build a faster-than-light drive, using smart dodges we never thought of before. It’s NOT impossible, after all, even in Relativity.

David Sider-La France

yo!! good job!!! forward thrust or momentum is as simple as creating negative energy movement by using 2 magnet wheels [as shown in all art throughout history]. Having these two magnetized wheels spinning in adverse directions [create a spin from exploiting magnetic steels tendency to push the opposing away] keeping them controlled so that energy is pushed out from the two wheels like mud behind a wheel.

thank you. carry on.

David Sider-La France

hmmmm,… contemplating these options with the consideration of the a fore noted device, i conclude that if you pointed the wheels and the frequencies towards your device, it would expedentially increase the quantum build-up of particulates
within the device solving your inquisition into manipulation of the energy conduit.

cre8iveman@aol.com

“Seemingly in contravention of the law of conservation of momentum,” All ready I am skeptical… “the team confirmed that the device produces thrust by using electricity, and nothing else.” OK, well how does this make it a ‘quantum’=drive engine? “Supporters call them microwave thrusters or quantum vacuum plasma thrusters (QVPT), while most others use the phrase “anomalous thrust device.” Okay, so we have a semantic disagreement here. Standing by for more Info before accepting this claim.

Donald Gracia

Its using quantum vacuum electrons and either accelerating them electrically or exciting them with radiation…Its really a more affirmative experiment of QVE similar to Kasimir experiments but bigger…

cre8iveman@aol.com

There are virtual particles in the quantum vacuum, not electrons. And nature always balances out the momentary existence of a virtual particle with its exact opposite energy level. We’ll see if this really pans out or is just another useless invention.

Donald Gracia

Yeah but the virtual particle can transform into rest mass from energy to mass conversions. This has been demonstrated in particle accelerators. So there are electrons manifesting within a certain statistical rate.

cre8iveman@aol.com

Only if there is enough energy for this to happen. And usually there is not.

cre8iveman@aol.com

Particle accelerators have lots of power to do this. Virtual particles are not high energy compared to accelerators.

Donald Gracia

Wrong, they can…

cre8iveman@aol.com

Wrong, the energy of the vacuum is insufficient for this technology to work. This concept has already been debunked.

James Riendeau

Makes no sense. Nature abhors a vacuum so much, she’ll put stuff in the empty space even if there’s no way to get it in there? How is that not a violation of the conservation of mass?

xcore

“Nature abhors a vacuum “
well its odd that you quote Aristotle born in Stagirus, northern Greece, in 384 BCE

and by Nature you are referring to a single planet full of organic living entities , nature in the universe or multiverse sense means you are not even a plank scale entity at these scales….

and its mostly empty space ,even a single atomic particle is mostly empty space …that’s also full of energy and mass following the generic entropy rules on time scales you cant even imagine.

Pooua

Because that mass arises from the energy that exists everywhere in space, through the conversion of energy to mass. There is no such thing as a perfect vacuum, because even in the absence of matter, space contains energy that cannot be removed fully.

oOXOo

I’m ready!

adamrussell

I think I see. The microwaves push off the short lived particle/antiparticles. This imparts momentum to the particles and equal and opposite momentum to the ship. Then the particles recombine and vanish leaving behind the momentum you already took from them?

edit: except the microwaves in a cavity are going both directions so I dont know how that helps, even if it is interesting.

Pooua

The statements say that nobody is sure how this device works, but the best guess is that microwaves traveling one direction impart relativistic velocity to virtual particles, but less velocity going the other direction. Either that, or someone just hasn’t noticed a flaw in the experiment, which is my guess. I mentioned elsewhere that I suspect someone is neglecting a heating effect of some kind. My suspicion is that microwaves are making gas molecules eject from the surface of the device, and the shape of the device results in a net thrust in one direction.

Knowles2

Which will be rule out pretty quickly just by placing the device in a vacuum chamber.

Joseph Hassler

Does anyone know the origin of the first photo (it is not in the credits)? Movie or TV?…

Zach B.

Mark Rademaker made the pic (among others) in collaboration with NASA scientist for their 100 year Starship project. It’s a theoretical mockup on what our first faster than light ship could look like.

Ummm, didn’t Da Vinci have conceptual drawings of a ship that could travel through space using the SAME conceptualization of a star drive? I recall seeing a show that talked about that maybe 20 years ago…

Dan

I’m curious.

oggologgo

Stop falling for such bullshit, and get just a little bit of critical sense.

Knowles2

three teams have achieve positive results from emDrive, my critical sense saying we need to look further into these drives and find out what going on once and for all.

In a ideal world we will find out that our understanding of the universe is incomplete and that these drives do work as advertise because that is a lot more exciting than them not working at all.

Blade Runner

Its already confirmed, China has EmDrive engines that put out thousands of times more thrust than this device. But good on nasa for saying yea it works instead of trying to figure out why and having to spend 50 years re-writing the laws of physics to explain why.Free energy next folks. Laws of physics, only there to be broken.

If you impart momentum to virtual particles and then they self-annihilate then what happens to the momentum? Surely it is not lost. Is it spit out as a type of photon?
—————————-
Actually, Im not really clear how they can self-annihilate without producing annihilation energy. When thinking of them as a brief dance of the uncertainty principle it seemed reasonable but if they are alive long enough to interact with the universe it seems less reasonable. Perhaps if self-annihilation results in no energy produced then there must be a negative energy that balances the books?

Naum Rusomarov

You take it, then you leave it. It’s a zero sum game. The total energy of the system has not changed, nor its momentum. Virtual particles are governed by the Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, therefore their existence does not violate the total energy of the system, because they appear for a short period of time and then they disappear just as they appeared. At the end nothing’s changed. The more energy the particles have, the shorter they exist.

Also, virtual particles are a transient phenomena. If you really want them to become real particles you need to give them energy. This is what’s being done during black holes evaporation, or in the modern particle colliders. The first gives some of its own energy to create the particles; in the second case we accelerate other particles, i.e., we give them more energy, and smash them into each other, which creates particles that previously didn’t exist. In simple terms, there is no free beer.

carol argo

It works so its ok?wow !we dont know or understand what we do but we ll use it?hahaha!big bang incoming

Knowles2

We seem to cope with Glass alright, don’t know how it works but it does, it useful, so we keep on using it, despite knowing how it works. It also the same for drugs, we know they work, they make the patients better, even if we don’t understand precisely how they work.

Chris Reich

I think this is like the cold fusion announcement. The virtual particles that pop in and out of existence are products of quantum mechanics — there is no free lunch with energy and those ‘virtual’ particles cannot be utilized for energy.

The article starts by saying that this seems to violate the conservation of energy. The conservation of energy has been called and probably is the most reliable law of physics.

Knowles2

Except unlike Cold fusion, this effect have been observe by three separate teams, using two different design machines.

Naum Rusomarov

lol. send it into space and prove that it works and then we’ll talk.

FWIW, I’d bet my life that this thing will not produce thrust no matter what if launched in space. :)

davidbyrden

Knowles2; it’s not the number of teams that matters so much as their credibility and the size of the reported effect.

craig

Sounds like impulse power, not warp for anyone that remembers original series (sublight , almost light speed)

Nitin Bansal

Now just make it open source…the technology would then accelerate. Else, it might get crushed under the pressure of corporate greeds

andrewp3

If this works as advertised, it enables Jetson-style transportation, cheap space travel including travel to the stars, and also enables the production of free energy; place such a device on a wheel and allow it to spin up past break-even speed. It would immediately obsolete a host of major global industries and draw revenues in the trillions of dollars. It would stop environmental pollution by fossil fuels in its tracks.

So it’s a very big if, is it not?

Pierre

free energy? wha? how? why would anyone? :) I think you have a problem grasping the concept of action/reaction and the concept of this machine :) Even with 100% efficiency- such a system you proposed would only get back the energy that was consumed by the engine. So where do you get the extra energy?

OutruntheWind

It may not require fuel, but it still requires electricity. This is easy close to a star since there is abundant solar radiation to harvest, but when you start talking about interstellar travel (or even travel in the outer solar system) you’re going to need to bring an energy source with you (such as nuclear power) which will require some sort of fuel.

adamrussell

Sure, but its much easier to carry 12 lbs of nuclear fuel instead of tons of chemical propellant.

mitcheroo

And once again, as with Sputnik and Gargarin, we’ve potentially let a foreign power (China, or anyone else with some petty cash and a little sense whom we haven’t heard from yet) get the jump on us, catch us with our pants down. A ten-year jump!

With all our reputation for genius and innovation, why are we so hidebound sometimes? If I was president, I’d fire that muslim-loving idiot Charles Bolden for this and frog-march his ass all the way off Merritt Island.

IA_Adam

One the idiot hippie generation took the reins of power over in the US, it’s been all downhill. They warped their minds with drugs and hedonism, and now all they can do is make images of advancement; not the real deal.

Zadan

Well citizens of the USA are simply the most ignorant people on the planet. There is a reason your country is failing, your economy sucks and your people stomp out any real technological innovation. You’re all religious zealots with easily the worst education out of the first world.

Your education teaches creationism as a legit theory. That says it all. And you blame “muslim lovers” hahahaha. So. Stupid.

my buddy’s step-mother makes $76 /hour on the computer . She has been laid off for 9 months but last month her pay check was $14822 just working on the computer for a few but isn’t the main problem with those thrusters that it requires high amounts of energy for there relative low thrust

bit.ly/1s07sra

davidbyrden

The NASA experiment measured a very small force. I expect this to be an experimental error. I understand that the device was tested in air, while connected to power lines, and with metal objects not very far away; electromagnetic and convective forces may have been in play.

We cannot examine NASA’s setup, but we can read the “theory paper” by the inventor of the Emdrive. It’s a very interesting read.
Roger Shawyer calculates the Emdrive’s thrust by taking the front and rear walls into account. He IGNORES the side walls. Since they are slanted, it’s entirely possible that they will incur enough negative force to cancel out the positive force that he calculates.

At one point, the paper is actually funny. Mr. Shawyer imagines his device filled with gas instead of microwaves. Once again, he ignores the side walls, and so he predicts a net force. This should be a hint that his calculations are incomplete, but he merely brushes it off like so;
“the resultant force would merely introduce a mechanical strain in the waveguide walls”.
Yes, you read that correctly. Roger Shawyer apparently doesn’t know the formula F=ma !

Well, I don’t know who is right or wrong, but the sidewalls are mentioned in the FAQ on the EmDrive site.

Q. Why does the net force not get balanced out by the axial
component of the sidewall force?

A. The net force is not balanced out by the axial component of
the sidewall force because there is a highly non linear relationship
between waveguide diameter and group velocity. (e.g. at cut off
diameter, the group velocity is zero, the guide wavelength is infinity, but the diameter is clearly not zero.) The design of the cavity is such that the ratio of end wall forces is maximised, whilst the axial component of the sidewall force is reduced to a negligible value.

So, “The net force is not balanced out”. If Roger Shawyer knows this, then why doesn’t he publish the equation?

I am not so cynical as to think he planned a scam from day one. I think he omitted the side wall calculations at the outset because microwave experiments usually ignore the side walls, so he had no examples to copy.

People have been asking him about the sidewalls for years. He should have published the calculations by now. But once again, I am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt; instead of assuming that he’s hiding something, I will assume he’s simply unable to calculate them.

The above, of course, are my opinions only.

Astroraider

I am guessing that, assuming it works, no one has a clue how or why it actually works that they can prove

GregP507

Woo-woo power

Nic Johnson

Why, oh why internet do you have to give me such hope for the future when this will be shown to be an error in experimental methods in a month or so? I am taking the last quantum class of my undergrad this year, so maybe I’ll understand it by the time they realize it’s bullshit.

The Wired article was based only on a brief summary available on the NASA site. The complete paper is available from AIAA (American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics – the organizer of the conference) at this link:http://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10…
Note that you need to pay for it or have a subscription through your employer/university.

Page 14 of the paper makes it clear that the null test article was used to examine the effect of the magnetic field generated by the current flowing through the power cables to the device – this field registered on the balance as a small thrust. This could then be subtracted from the thrust measured on the fully working device to determine how much thrust it was actually producing….”

Matt Campbell

Lots of comments, opinions, and interest in this area. To start with, we solved the Earth to space launch quite a while ago, at least over a decade, if not longer, with laser powered heat exchangers. For cost and simplicity, they cannot be beaten. The atmosphere still poses a bit of a challenge with dissipation, but for the most part works rather well, as I have seen. In the second part, my gut intuition tells me quantum jumping occurs on the macroscopic scale at GR velocities. Its all about coherence. Traveling in interstellar space poses no insurmountable difficulty, even if using (primitive) ED tethers to ride the magnetic “wind”.

As to the article, it conjures up the Munchausen drive. Supposing it works and is repeatable, would not be worth the time it takes, like the Casimir effect. Travel that can be measured in human time requires a lot of power, at least to have any sort of impact on worlds populated with creatures with short lifespans. In other words, we wouldn’t be having this conversation if we had the lifespans of rocks.

Peter Burke

Not only does it break conservation of momentum, it also breaks
conservation of energy.

Imagine that you will compete in the 2020 All Electric Le
Mans. You mount an emDrive on the back to add extra kick. You start and fall
behind the others due to the extra weight and energy being diverted from the
wheels. As we pick up speed though and up shift the gears, there is a drop in
torque and acceleration. But for you the additional thrust from the emDrive
remains constant and starts to give you an advantage. Next you come to a series
of tight turns where you use your regenerative breaking. By this time you are a
long way behind.

An hour later you are approaching the first recharge stop and all the others
are stopped for 20 minutes for a recharge. You sail past them taking the lead,
you don’t need to recharge because every time you use the regenerative breaking
you get back slightly more than you originally drained from the battery during acceleration!

Matt Campbell

Returning to the interstellar proposition, it takes a tremendous amount of energy to move a tin can with Earthly comforts between the stars. Even if you used a duty cycle, the energy dropped across the Penning trap would offset the savings from non-relativistic velocity.

A power source rated in Sols is needed. Steep ramp up, steep braking, and the rest a constant relativistic velocity punctuated with jumps.

davidbyrden

According to the article, the NASA team’s attitude to the Emdrive was;
“Alright!” they said. “We’ll test your stupid drive that won’t work.”

I’d like to see a source for this claim?

Because, after reading about the research team who conducted the test, I would personally expect them to have a very different attitude; something along the lines of

Solar won’t work in the relative darkness of space on such a long trip. You would need nuclear (ie Pu238 based thermalelectric generators (TEGs). But paired with this engine, it could be an interesting future. Now we just have to get the US to fund science and education again.

Maciej Marosz

I alredy explained why above egine works !!! ( very simple test you can repeat in home )

in 2012 I made in home Michelson Morley BUT Joules/ mm^2 version ( Intensity edition )

It has just come out that this is a bogus claim made by a small handful of researchers at NASA, who are quickly backtracking from their assertions.

helioblak

now if we can only get this stuff into production before we destroy ourselves

okohemmanueljohn@gmail.com

Very possible considering the principles of plasma cutters and welding technologies, if properly researched and less criticized would open an entire new type of propulsion, the fourth state of mattee (plasma) is very powerful and intricate.

crygdyllyn

It does require sunlight, right? So, how could it be used for interstellar travel?
It could be used for travel around the solar system, but not between the stars.

Summers

What is result in the end?not blow?

Summers

Orbit citeziens

nosniborobinson

Apparently a Chinese professor figured out the theory, and emDrive is not a quantum device. He reported an improved model that put our 750mN at 2500W, a great improvement over the perpetual bridesmaid VASIMIR at 5N for 200kW. Here is the link: http://www.emdrive.com/yang-juan-paper-2012.pdf. Like plasma thrusters, it would have to be solar or nuclear powered.

The future exploration of interstellar space will not be done by transporting our physical bodies through space and time. It will be done economically with no propulsion whatsoever. It is our only viable solution as our mass prevents us from exceeding the speed of light. We might never succeed in building an Alcubierre drive. What our descendants will do is that they will scan, from our home world, a portion of a distant object down to the molecular level. The sensitivity of our sensors is becoming more and more precise with every passing year and one day we will be able to instantaneously download the data using quantum entanglement principles and reproduce the information holographically on our own home world (à la “holodeck”). While we are interacting with the downloaded environment, the physical modifications we apply to it in the holographical version will be uploaded and applied on the physical distant object. It would be like being there, without being there. No transport required, only an exchange of data, using spooky action at a distance.

Elliander Eldridge

Here’s an idea: Let’s just build one outside of the lab and just see
what it does. If it works it should do something and if it doesn’t it
won’t. Wouldn’t that be a viable test? Even if it ends up not working as
even the inventor thinks, if it does anything at all that can be looked
into and investigated and then potentially applied into useful
applications.

Chris H

I love how this article claims that a warp drive isn’t such a ‘hairbrained idea’ anymore. If NASA builds a quantum drive that doesn’t even go at 1/2 the speed of light, it just proves that statement wrong. With the quantum drive, it will take a few weeks to get to Mars. With a warp drive, you could get there in half an hour.

Elliander Eldridge

Right. Even if we built this drive and it worked it won’t say anything about warp drives. It’s just that one possible explanation assumes that it works by burning up particles that spontaneously come into existence which if true might say something about warp drives, but we don’t necessarily know.

As far as speeds go this type of engine would go faster the farther it goes so if it works it could take us as fast as a tenth of the speed of light which isn’t warp speed either but can take us to alpha centauri in just a few decades which means the colonization of other solar systems would be possible.

Personally, I would be happy if we can just wirelessly transmit energy to a ship as it is launching to get safer and cheaper space launches into orbit.

Chris H

A fast engine doesn’t allow for colonization; there are other factors that must be taken into account. First of all, it will be decades again before people other than scientists or astronauts will board a sub-light speed ship. Second of all, we are probably not the only ones in universe. There is a good chance we will run into a species with superior technology. Besides, a warp drive at the speed of light could reach Proxima Centauri in about 5 years. Decades of travel isn’t practical no matter how new the engine is. The distances are too astronomical.

Elliander Eldridge

I disagree. A fast engine is definitely the deciding factor that will allow space colonization. Sure, warp speed would be more practical, but there are already people willing to move to Mars for the rest of their lives and real plans to send them there. If it was possible to send people to another solar system within their life time I am sure some people would actually agree to it especially if we look into cryonics with gene therapy. I think it’s more likely that we will send probes on a decades long voyage though. The technology will always improve so by the time we have even faster drives the probes will get there to send back information.

mike dar

For now, there is no ‘collection’ process for the fuel. Who volenteers to go up with a broom and sweep up some dust?

protn7

This quote is typical of wrongheaded stuff about the EM Drive “The
EmDrive doesn’t use propellant. In
fact, nothing is being pushed
out the back of it at all. It supposedly gets its thrust by bouncing
microwaves around inside a closed chamber, which physicists say
absolutely should not work. A popular analogy is trying to move your
car by sitting inside of it and pushing the steering wheel.”

In my understanding the EM drive is not violating newtons law any
more than a solar sail is. Microwave
photons inside the cavity
bounced off the walls and their momentum pushed the rocket in the
opposite direction.

The two voyager probes at the heliopause in deep space are both
off course since they have been emitting infrared photons from their
nuclear power systems. The cumulative force of those heat photons
caused thrust that
matches the thrust necessary to account for
their course deviations. Photons have momentum and energy.

Contact Neil Farbstein at inventzilla@gmail.com if you are interested in working on
designing EM drives with advanced materials and other modifications that might improve its performance.

Jake_Arr

Hmmm, I could convert my car to a space shuttle! ;)

Naman Arora

hey, I’ve got a theory as of how it might be working.
I’ve just learnt that electrons have mass, negligibly small mass, but it is there.
So what I am suggesting is that this emDrive might me using electrons as fuel! It might be just throwing electrons at a very high rate, which also explains the need for so much electrical energy(2.5kW) for such a little amount of thrust.
Please suggest your views on my theory, I’m still studying in school so I might have gone it wrong somewhere.The theory also follows law of conservation of momentum.

Bruce A. Frank

People forget that in the early days of the US space program it was speculated that we couldn’t travel to Mars because current rockets (then) would just require too much energy. Such statements were concluded with, “Current technology shows such trips impossible.”

Similar stuff was said about “star-Wars” orbital defense. “Can’t be done with current technology!” So let’s not waste the money! The idea was to establish the program and develop the technology…which we have now! Remember the claims that taking down an ICBM would be like taking down a rifle bullet with a BB gun. “It can’t be done!”

The tech evolved and now we can. This technology will evolve and “we will(!)” travel at unfathomable velocity. And FTL is likely no more than a century away…unless the Islamic caliphate succeeds in global nuclear war!

The Emdrive has a lot of potentialities for space travel.. the problem is that no one knows what is really happening inside the device. If they don’t discover why it works, further improvements will be impossible.

Fortunately, EmDrive isn’t the only existing E.M engine: after 23 years of researches ASPS’s PNN is far more efficient than Shawyer’s device.

Reading this after a year has passed…I’m just curious as to whether the thrust they got was possibly from electrons themselves being projected out of the motor…a very weak ion drive based around the same electron gun technology found in tube TVs, as it were.

Even if this works – believe me, I have full hopes that it does – wouldn’t spacecrafts still need something more…explosive, to get off the ground?

ShaggyTheClown17

Have they ever even tried to take a simply turbine generator into space? Like the little thing with the magnets n copper coils? You would think it wouldn’t be such a burden to test one fuckin time u know, cus theres no reason why it wouldn’t work in a near frictionless place, hell use the energy generated in very short bursts to keep the thing going if it ever slows, it’d logically produce several thousand times more energy than it uses, question is why the hell haven’t they tried it yet? They send people up in fuckin rockets all the time, why can’t they do this? I mean it wouldn’t be groundbreaking really, but it would supply literally an endless supply of electricity and make things alot better here, I think they’ve figured out how to transfer electricity wirelessly so seemingly all they’d have to do is set the things going and just have a constant stream going straight to receivers right? It wouldn’t solve all our problems but it would make things alot easier.

Stuart Middlemiss

Quantum displacement engine… Continually taking snapshots of the quantum space around the deep space exploration vessel (only usable in the vacuum of space) to move such a vessel theoretically faster than the wavelength of light…

jim

Ion prepulsion sounds good, but what if you used a higher power source, such as nuclear, or possible fusion, like the tritium, hydrogen fusion reactor that’s being tested. I’m thinking of a deep space capable assemble in orbit type of ship think of the potential, is it possible?

Festy

Why does it need solar panels if it’s a “no fuel” ship? And how is it impossible if it’s just a variation of 2 already existing designs? And if it used solar panels, then how is it going to travel on interstellar trips as this article suggests? This whole article makes no sense. Electricity IS fuel first of all. Second, if all it is doing is catching photons via solar panels, then expelling them on a microwave frequency, it basically IS an ion drive… Or just a more complex solar sail. Either way it has nothing at all to do with subspace or vacuum plasma or even Santa Claus. I hate how scientists have started using catch phrases like quantum vacuum and subspace to answer questions they don’t know the answer to. It’s like the science equivalent of “cuz god wanted it that way”.

Duncan

“Future test plans include independent verification and validation at other test facilities.” – it’s been over a year, has this been done yet before we all get excited?

williamsommerwerck

Okay, but… What about the other particle in the pair? Won’t it be accelerated in the opposite direction, cancelling out the momentum gain?

James Allen Powell

The only question that needs to be answered now is “does it work in space” or just here on Earth?

I have a theory that Nikoli Tesla developed a rocket engine capable of near light speed. What travels at 184,000 miles per second? And what if it could be harnessed into a single beam of thrust? I’m no physicist but a dreamer like Tesla and H.G. Wells. Imagine if such an engine could be developed in our future. Trips to Mars would only take minutes or hours; trip to the Moon would be seconds. Research colonies could be established on the Moon and Mars and supplied like the Space Station. Of course it would give cause for worry to our enemies.

johndubose

What the article did not tell us is whether the experiment was done in an earthly laboratory in a vacuum or out in orbit. It is a BIG deal which.

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